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The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

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Re: The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

#141

Post by aw3c2 »

raldi wrote: post #56

Has any publisher tried out a paywall along the lines of the following? "Hey, you've spent 29 hours so far this year reading 119 articles. Suggested donation: $62"

"Hey, we kept track of all the things you read here. This month you spent 13 hours looking at clickbait-boobies, 2 on politics and 27 on coverage of divorce cases. Wouldn't it suck if someone else used your machine right now or if we gave this information to tens of third-parties (we already did)?"

I would support that. Might make people more aware of how pervasive tracking is.

Re: The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

#142

Post by aw3c2 »

seanp2k2 wrote: post #93
jcoffland wrote: post #55

I prefer Reuters. They seem to have less bias, their articles are free and many stories at other news outlets are bought from Reuters anyway.

There's also AP.org http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/fronts/RAW?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME Many news agencies are just editorializing AP news anyway.

When I realised that, I stopped considering the majority of "news regurgitation" worth my money.

Re: The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

#143

Post by azag0 »

abtinf wrote: post #106
azag0 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How come this isn't culturally perceived in the same way as not paying for software or movies or music? I've read various reasons why people don't want to pay. That's fine. But then simply don't read it.

> the Journal also started letting people read for free links that are shared on social media by subscribers and staffers. Because the publisher explicitly allows it.

No. The publisher wants their subscribers to be able to share the stuff they pay for with other people. If you use that feature to read for free any content they publish, you misuse it. Now, I am very much against any DRM, I don't even really believe that intellectual property should be protected by law, but I believe that content creators have legitimate (but not necessarily legal) right to be paid for their content. (If they want to have legally enforceable income, they need to find different schemes.) If you avoid paying, you're denying them that right. Again, I don't think this should be covered by law, but I also don't think it's fair.

Re: The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

#144

Post by lorenzhs »

idiot_stick wrote: post #135
pascalxus wrote: post #4

First of all, I think it's great that journalists can get compensated for their work. but, strictly speaking as a consumer, I must say their paywall is completely out of touch with the way I want to pay for news consumption. I don't mind paying 5c or even 10c per article, but I'm certainly not going to sign up to pay 120$ for 6 months, if I'm only going to read 1 or 2 articles here and there. but since they've done i…

So 15 minutes of entertainment time to you (the time spent consuming a WSJ article) is worth 5 or 10 cents? Imagine if you were compensated at the same rate for your work. I suggest you try to find a substitute for those entertainment pennies. If you can, and that item is "free", good for you. But I doubt 5 or 10 cents gets you much.

A Netflix subscription is around 30 cents per day.

Not to mention that 15 minutes is a very generous estimate, the median is probably closer to 3-5 minutes. Given that the article isn't written for me, that sounds rather fair for accessing it. A print subscription to the WSJ is $400/yr or $1.30/issue, and if I spend an hour reading it that comes out to 6 to 11 cents for a 3-to-5-minute article.

Re: The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

#145

Post by wslh »

Retr0spectrum wrote: post #137
ctrl_freak wrote: post #28

If anyone's looking for another workaround, the article actually hints at the solution: Facebook's l.php redirect that it uses when you click on a link shared through the platform. It functions similarly to the Google redirect, and you don't even need a Facebook account for it to work. E.g. https://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=https://www.wsj.com/article...

The only downside with this is that facebook gets a small amount of data about your browsing habbits.

You can create a fake account.

Re: The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

#146

Post by bjelkeman-again »

stenius wrote: post #23
bmcd wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should see if your local library gives you access to Zinio - I get the Economist (and numerous other publications) for free through ours.

Good tip, but when I was subscribing to the Economist, I found it worth using their app, which was much better, although, not free.

IMHO the Economist has the best iPad app for reading longer news/analysis content I have come across. The simplicity of the navigation and the non-nonsens approach to article viewing is just very good. I don't get why others can't do the same.

Re: The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

#147

Post by fauigerzigerk »

sumedh wrote: post #136
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a subscription to the Economist for years and was reader for much longer, but the content has gotten much worse and they insist on displaying video ads right in the middle of articles even if you pay for a subscription.

I have Economist subscription and U Block, never seen any video ads. Why do you think the content has gotten worse?

I feel the content has become less evidence based, less thorough, less anlytic, less principled and less hard hitting than it used to be. There's more purely anecdotal/cultural stuff that I can get anywhere.

They used to ask important questions, investigate them thoroughly and then make the case for a particular conclusion. You could agree or disagree, but now it's often just an exercise in careful fence sitting, in "being sensible", even on matters where taking a principled stand is the obvious thing to do.

That said, I'm not entirely certain if it's me who has changed or The Economist or both.

Re: The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

#148

Post by Someone »

freehunter wrote: post #13
gleenn wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is still incentive for WSJ to allow Google to index, they probably just will redirect you to sign up when you click through. Perhaps they'd let Google just index the preview text to prevent using the cache

Doesn't Google punish sites that show different content to Googlebot than they do to a user?

"Perhaps they'd let Google just index the preview text" would take care of that.

Re: The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

#149

Post by davedx »

ctrl_freak wrote: post #28

If anyone's looking for another workaround, the article actually hints at the solution: Facebook's l.php redirect that it uses when you click on a link shared through the platform. It functions similarly to the Google redirect, and you don't even need a Facebook account for it to work. E.g. https://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=https://www.wsj.com/article...

Ah, the WSJ, hotbed of climate change denial. I don't click through to any of their articles anyway. I wish them well with their stupid paywall

Re: The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

#150

Post by bitexploder »

wslh wrote: post #145
Retr0spectrum wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only downside with this is that facebook gets a small amount of data about your browsing habbits.

You can create a fake account.

It still helps them if it all aggregates under one account.
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